Dramatic License - Hroswitha - The One Year Women in Christian History Devotional

935–1002

The art of theater has been overshadowed in recent years by film, TV, and now Internet, but the original “moving pictures” happened on stage—and the history of theater provides great insight into the development of humanity. But theater history has a thousand-year hole in it, one that’s filled only by the German nun Hroswitha.

The Greeks basically invented the theater art form, some four hundred years before Christ. As with many other things, the Romans borrowed from the Greeks—and the area they excelled in was comedy. Playwrights Plautus and Terence perfected the farce, with its bawdy, street-level antics. These plays were rife with dirty jokes, so it’s no surprise that, when Christians took over the empire, theater was discouraged and sometimes outlawed.

Fast-forward to the late 900s, to a convent in Germany, where Hroswitha reads the plays of Terence and says, “I want to do that too.” But where Terence’s plays were irreverent, Hroswitha’s would be worshipful. Terence’s plays were mostly mindless fun; Hroswitha’s would embed practical philosophy. Terence used female characters as sexual pawns; Hroswitha would create strong women faced with important choices. Terence joked about fornication; Hroswitha would mock the fornicators and exalt chastity.

In Hroswitha’s play Dulcitius, a Roman commander pressures a Christian virgin into sex—but he becomes miraculously (and comically) confused and ends up wooing kitchen pots instead. This is high farce, but it also upholds Christian commitment. In Gallicanus, a young woman is saved from an arranged marriage when her would-be husband converts and honors her vow of chastity. We wonder if this is close to the playwright’s own story. Presumably from a noble family, she would have had suitors, but she chose to serve Christ rather than a husband, and in the convent, she found freedom to worship the Lord and practice her art.

The Bible weaves two themes together: liberation and servanthood. Hroswitha understood that, oddly enough, the two are linked. You find true freedom in serving the Lord—whether you are serving him in and through your marriage, or whether your unmarried life allows you to serve him with single-minded devotion.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:32